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October 31, 2017

October 31, 2017 – Come learn about our wild weather at this year’s Super Science Saturday on November 4 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Mesa Lab in south Boulder. Read More

Next Mars Rover Will Have 23 ‘Eyes’

A selection of the 23 cameras on NASA’s 2020 Mars rover. Many are improved versions of the cameras on the Curiosity rover, with a few new additions as well. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

October 31, 2017 – When NASA’s Mars Pathfinder touched down in 1997, it had five cameras: two on a mast that popped up from the lander, and three on NASA’s first rover, Sojourner. Since then, camera technology has taken a quantum leap. Photo sensors that were improved by the space program have become commercially ubiquitous. Cameras have shrunk in size, increased in quality and are now carried in every cellphone and laptop.

October 31, 2017 – A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder has been selected to build a tiny orbiting satellite to study the evaporating atmospheres of gigantic “hot Jupiters” – distant gaseous planets orbiting scorchingly close to their parent stars. Read More

October 31, 2017 – The Air Force Association (AFA) announced today that its StellarXplorers Program, the National High School Space Competition, registered 180 teams in the program’s fourth competition season, marking a 37 percent increase from the previous year. Read More

More News:

Colorado School of Mines – home of the largest collegiate section of the Society of Women Engineers in the nation – was recognized with multiple awards at WE17, SWE’s annual convention Oct. 26-28 in Austin, Texas.

DigitalGlobe, a business unit of Maxar Technologies (NYSE: MAXR; TSX: MAXR), today announced a multi-year agreement with Orbital Insight to expand the scope of their existing data partnership and fuel global-scale analytic solutions. Orbital Insight, a leader in geospatial analytics, will operate at petabyte-scale as a DigitalGlobe Geospatial Big Data (GBDX) platform partner.

HAO scientists observed the August 21st total eclipse with a suite of three instruments with financial assistance provided by NASA. The experiments were intended to learn about the magnetic and thermal structure of the solar corona with the goal of understanding how the Sun generates weather in space.

The Space Foundation is accepting abstracts for papers to be presented at the 34th Space Symposium Tech Track, April 16, 2018, at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colo., USA. This premier global space conference annually attracts thousands of space professionals from dozens of countries. Abstracts will be accepted until Nov. 10, 2017, and authors will be notified of acceptance by Jan. 4, 2018.

The Earth’s atmosphere is never completely dark. Even at night, with no moon or stars, the atmosphere itself gives off light because of chemical reactions that are taking place. This phenomenon, appropriately known as airglow, is the basis for a camera an Aerospace team is developing to learn about the atmosphere and gather imagery.

When Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt left the lunar surface for the last time in 1972, many viewed the moon as a dry and barren world, with little to offer beyond flags and footprints for superpowers — a prize that had been clearly won by the United States. Fast-forward almost a half-century later, and a lot has changed. Our scientific and strategic understanding of the moon and its resource potential has expanded dramatically.

A giant planet – the existence of which was previously thought extremely unlikely – has been discovered by an international collaboration of astronomers, with the University of Warwick taking a leading role.

China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC), a major space contractor, is collaborating with research institutes to develop a reusable launch vehicle and plans to make its maiden flight in 2020, Science and Technology Daily reported.